See ‘The great wave off Kanagawa’ at the NGV in Melbourne

From 21 July 17 – 15 October 17 you will be able to see one of the most well-known pieces of Japanese art in conscionable memory is coming to Australia and you need to go and see it.

Hokusai is the first major presentation in Australia at Victoria’s National Gallery (NGV) of one of Japan’s most influential, prolific and everlastingly popular artists, Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849). He was an influential master of Japanese manga and a self-proclaimed ‘drawing maniac’, producing a body of work comprising some of the most recognisable and reproduced images in the history of Asian art, most notably ‘The great wave’.

Spanning the artist’s entire career, the Hokusai exhibition will include more than 150 works by the artist, comprising woodblock prints, rare paintings on silk never-before-seen in Australia and hand-printed manga.

Produced in a landmark international collaboration between the NGV and the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum (JUM), which houses the world’s largest and oldest collection of traditional Japanese woodblock prints, the exhibition will include the complete sets of Hokusai’s five career-defining series – all produced by the artist during his seventies and rarely on display in their totality – includingThirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, 1830–34, which features his iconic work The great wave off Kanagawa, c. 1830.

The exhibition will also feature all fifteen editions of The Hokusai Manga, the artist’s irreverent homage to Japanese humorous illustrations, which had an indelible impact on the development of contemporary manga in Japan and positioned Hokusai as a pioneer of the popular form.

“Katsushika Hokusai is considered one of Japan’s greatest and enduringly popular artists. His moving and dramatic compositions, including The great wave, show the coexistence between humanity and the awesome power of nature, a relationship that is as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century,” said Tony Ellwood, director, NGV.